Wendy Wood

Wendy Wood is a research psychologist who devoted the last 30 years to understanding how habits work. She is Provost Professor of Psychology and Business at the University of Southern California, where she also served as Vice Dean of Social Sciences.

A 2008 Radcliffe Institute Fellow, and 2018 Distinguished Chair of Behavioral Science at the Sorbonne/INSEAD in Paris, Wood has advised the World Bank, the Centers for Disease Control, and industries such as Proctor & Gamble and Lever Bros.

Wood completed her graduate degree in psychology at the University of Massachusetts. She went on to be the James B. Duke Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University. Having published over 100 scientific articles, she received numerous awards for her research and teaching. For the past three decades, her research has been continuously funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Health, and the Templeton Foundation.

Wood has written for The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, and her work has been featured in The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, Time magazine, and USA Today, and on NPR. She lectures widely and recently launched the website '"Good Habits Bad Habits" to convey scientific insight on habits to the general public.